Religious Roots.

In the Middle Ages drama developed first in the church and consisted of short plays staged on important feast days in the liturgical calendar. By 1500, these dramatic traditions had inspired huge mystery cycles that were often mounted by the guilds and other corporate bodies in Europe's cities. The scope of the mystery cycles was often enormous, with the cycles sometimes taking from several days to weeks to perform. By this time, too, morality plays were also popular. These dramas treated Christian themes from an allegorical perspective, their characters named after the virtues and vices. In the sixteenth century religious drama underwent a transformation, first under the influences of the Protestant Reformation, and later by the Counter Reformation in those parts of the continent that remained loyal to the church at Rome. As a result of these religious developments, the great medieval mystery...